20 Things You Should Never Do on an Airplane

Don’t eat food after it’s fallen on the tray table

Yuck! That tray table doesn’t get sterilized between flights, so unless you’ve brought your own disinfectant or place mat, let that cookie crumb go if it hits the tray and not your plate. “The tray table is notorious,” said Stephen Morse, professor of epidemiology at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. Ferguson adds that tray tables are usually only wiped down once a day, when the plane goes into an overnight station.